The Art of Richard Mayhew: Through Jan. 10. Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission St., San Francisco. (415) 358-7200. www.moadsf.org.

Despite not liking San Francisco in general (especially driving there), I want to go see Richard Mayhew’s bright abstract landscapes. They are so full of mood and personality!

“I feel fortunate that I found an element, a life, that I love,” he said. “I know Toni Morrison, and she told me once that she enjoyed writing whether someone read it or not. That’s how I feel. Although I’m pleased when people share in the experience.” –Richard Mayhew

Bobbie Dixon was today’s demonstrator at Campbell Artists’ Guild. It was a chamber sort of a demo – with a table easel, and everybody sitting close to it to see what Bobby was doing. She showed how to transfer a small photo to a masonite (I think) of a bigger size first. Since the same can be done with a small sketch and a bigger final image, I paid attention. My usual method of enlarging by laying a grid over the sketch and another grid over the bigger tracing paper regularly leads to a situation where I loose focus going from one square to another and draw a wrong part in a wrong place.

Bobby seems to have a solution for that: she folds the photo into halves twice horizontally, then twice vertically, then folds it again so that you only see one square at a time. I am going to try it with the next drawing. If you see only one square, there is less chance to get distracted from what is in front of you, right?

The painting turn out great – raw, unfinished, still breathing, yet with all main components already in place. And Bobby graciously raffled it for CAG members.

We came to the fair unusually late this time and found out that there were more opportunities to park close to the trail that lead to the fair. It was almost chilly, and taking a shuttle ride in an open trolley didn’t look even remotely appealing. Not that walking up and down hills warmed me up, but it was definitely better. The ground was dump in some places, like it was raining earlier here.

When we later talked to Terry Steinke (which is always a pleasure, just like seeing his wonderful etchings), he said it was just low clouds from the ocean that condensed on trees so much it actually felt like a drizzle if you were standing under a tree. What felt so nice to me, was not doing any good to unprotected artworks on paper, and even some glazed ones and their mats were warping.

There was a lot of glass art, and diffused light made it even prettier than on a sunny day: Dehanna Jones, Sue Marek, Dan & Eve King-Lehman, and a few others who didn’t have business cards or anything else to help remember them. Why do artists do that?

New great finds:

• Esther Barr who creates almost animated animals in an ancient repousse technique
• Chunhong Chang, a Taiwanese artist whose beautiful paintings combine traditional European and Chinese techniques. Classic small Dutch paintings meets Ming Dynasty art.
• S. Fuess and her colorful horses in oil. She does not limit herself to horses only, it just happens to be my favorite subject that I notice first and that I remember better than anything else.
• Paul Wisdom with metal art that almost always incorporates bamboo in some form.

Artists whose work I was glad to see again:

• Joseph Battiato with all sorts of stoneware pots
• Ginny Conrow and her elegant crystalline glaze porcelain, Bruno Kark with bold, large ceramics of which vases in the form of folded tubes are my new favorites
• Nancy Chien-Eriksen and her most wonderful eclectic collection of dragons, horses, and other creatures
• Timon Sloane and his pastels full of emotion and color
• Sharon Spenser with new bronze sculptures that now harmoniously incorporate organic materials.

Got ourselves a new Aryeh Frankfurter’s CD, “The Twisting of the Rope.” Haven’t listened to it yet, but I am pretty sure it will be good. Everything by Aryeh that we had so far was good.

When we were leaving, ocean clouds were almost touching the ground. My attempts to shoot it without a tripod resulted in a series of images that showed varying degrees of camera shake. Still got some useful reference for future drawings.

The festival moved to the Pioneer Memorial Park, Mountain View this year. It’s a smaller place than the grounds of the Triton Museum (or so it looked to me), but the park is right next to downtown Mountain View – a place that is more popular than Triton. No, seriously, many people have no idea what the Triton Museum is or even that Santa Clara has an art museum.

Fine Arts League of Cupertino and Campbell Artists’ Guild, to clubs to which I belong, were sharing a lawn at the edge of the park. I was showing with FALC and chatting with CAG friends too – nice!

Kushlani Hall only brought her jewelry; no encaustics, no oils or oil pastels. Her jewelry was gorgeous, of course.

Saw the finished piece that Holly Van Hart was doing at the FALC demo in May. It’s changed a lot, and I still liked it very much. She also had a larger painting similar to that one, and they complimented each other nicely, hanging on the same panel.

Haven’t seen what Donna Orme was doing for almost a year, so it was a special pleasure to stop by her display. I am yet to see a single monoprint of hers that I didn’t like. I can’t even pick a favorite because if I turn my head and look again I’ll change my mind. Her work is that awesome.

Found some great new art that I haven’t seen before: graceful watercolors by Cheryl Kampe and dreamy acrylics by Nance Wheeler.

The third weekend was the quietest out of all three. There were almost no visitors, very few people even walked by. Maybe it was the heat, maybe something more interesting was going on in the neighborhood, maybe we didn’t do enough to promote the event.

Slava and me were showing at the Great American Framing. Marsha Sims, Kathy Sartain, Cathy Zander from the 1st SVOS weekend at Community School of Music and Arts were here again, and I met other artists that I don’t remember seeing before: Lei Min and Linda Salter.

Lei’s oils are beautiful and energetic. She used to do commission portraits and showed me an prospect from her solo exhibit with awesome portraits of Taiwan, Philippine, and Malaysia prominent figures and of their family members.

Linda Salter paints and draws many different subjects: great portraits, still life, figure drawings, landscapes. She seems to work in every medium available – oil, watercolor, graphite pencil, pastel, ink – and always experimenting. She was doing nice small ink drawings while in the gallery. Made me want to pick up my ink and brushes again.

We still had some guests, some good conversations with them and with each other, and I saw the local University Arts store for the first time. To say that I was impressed would be an understatement. It’s huge, it’s full of great stuff, and what I can’t or won’t use myself is still fascinating to look at. I am not going to their San Jose store, ever.

Got my horse photos, thanks Irina!

I liked Holly’s work since the first time I saw it when she joined FALC. Today she did a demo for the club, and it was a great one. Holly painted an abstract city with a palette knife, using a photo of New York as a reference or, better to say as a starting point for her artwork. I read about this technique before, but not a single author pointed out that it was noisy. Holly said that music helps to get over it, and I would imagine after some time you just stop paying attention to all the funny sounds that a palette knife makes. For me, the way Holly was going through the demo was of big help too. She explained her process, eagerly answered all question, and eventually got the audience involved into the creative process – people were making suggestions, calling her to the back of the room to take a fresh look at the painting, sharing their experience with oil and abstract art. It got very lively, and when the time was up I didn’t want to leave.

This weekend was the first time that Slava and me participated in SVOS as artists. Slava was at the Great American Framing Co & Gallery in Palo Alto (why or why don’t they have a website?), and I was at the courtyard of the Community School of Music and Arts along with Kathy Sartain, Marsha Sims, Cathy Zander, Kushlani Hall, and others. Apparently, Kushlani is in KALEID too – need to find her display there next time I go change my artworks.

When we were getting familiar with the place a couple of weeks ago, Kathy Zander said that Mother Nature always knows when there is going to be an art show and turns the wind on. It was very windy then, but this weekend Mother Nature decided to be creative and added rain to it. We were setting up under the drizzle and occasional big drops, with a wind gust here and there. Nothing too bad, but not exactly a weather that makes people want to go outside to see some art.

Still, we had quite a few guests, some with kids who were going to or from CSMA classes. Many of those kids love horses (yes, they are girls mostly, but there were two boys too). Kushlani’s daughter is a horse person herself, and she and her brother draw. Lucky Kushlani. My kids don’t touch art stuff at all.

Kids are hilarious. Watching them and just enjoying it was one of the best parts of the show. One boy was shouting today after all wondering around the courtyard, “What? Are we leaving already?!!” Another one discussed drawing horses with me – I think he was about 8 or 9. Very serious, no smiles.

I finally got to see what Kathy Sartain does – it’s glass mosaics, very beautiful. Marsha Sims’ photographs are great, especially the double rainbow and the rock sliding in your face (well, it gives that feeling that it keeps sliding towards you because of the tracks behind and the angle of the shot – absolutely awesome).

Kushlani painted her daughter from a photo today – a light figure walking into the darkness. She didn’t have time to finish it of course, but I really liked how it was turning out. And she had some kid for a company half of the time. She is doing oil, oil pastel, encaustic art, pretty jewelry, and she’s pretty good at all of it.

All I mastered when there were no visitors in the booth or around was 1.5 sketches. I can’t draw and converse at the same time.